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On July 3rd, approx 25 folks made our way to the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge/ London to offer solidarity to WikiLeaks and celebrate the 42nd. birthday of Julian Assange. WikiLeaks has been under siege by the U.S. empire since 2010 for exposing U.S. war crimes & the secret machinations of the daily grind of empire.

Julian has spent over a year surrounded by London Met police servicing a sealed U.S. grand jury indictment. The court martial of WikiLeaks source U.S. Private Bradley Manning is now in its 4th. week. Recently WikiLeaks was instrumental in helping N.S.A. whistleblower Edward Snowden escape the long arm of the U.S. secret surveillance state. Edward & WikiLeaks staffer Sarah Harrison are presently in the terminal of Russian airport as they seek sanctuary. This is a statement released by Edward Snowden in Moscow on July 1st. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/01-13

Those of us who gathered on the 3rd. are a mixed bunch. Some are Catholic Workers who offer shelter to refugees fleeing U.S. sponsored warfare in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and throughout Africa. Some are South Americans who lived under U.S. sponsored tyrannies in Chile and Colombia. Some are long time anti-war & civil liberties activists. For others, offering solidarity to Julian, Bradley, Edward, Ecuador & WikiLeaks has been their first experience of activism.

We have built a solidarity community of sorts over these long two years of persecution of Julian and Bradley, through multiple court appearances and embassy vigils, through the abandonment of these courageous men by the peace & human rights careerists and bureaucrats in London town.

Venezuela and Nicaragua have offered asylum to Edward Snowden, the US whistleblower who is believed to have spent the past two weeks at a Moscow airport evading US attempts to extradite him.

The Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, and his Nicaraguan counterpart, Daneil Ortega, made the asylum offers on Friday, shortly after they and other Latin American leaders met to denounce the diversion of a plane carrying the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, due to suspicions that Snowden might have been on board.

The invitations came as Snowden sent out new requests for asylum to six countries, in addition to the 20 he has already contacted, according to WikiLeaks, which claims to be in regular contact with the former National Security Agency contractor.

Most of the countries have refused or given technical reasons why an application is not valid, but several Latin American leaders have rallied together with expressions of solidarity and welcome.

An Aeroflot plane en route from Moscow to Havana has deviated from its course, FlightAware live flight tracking indicates. The news has sparked online speculation that NSA leaker Edward Snowden may be aboard the aircraft. See:

Short report from Manning solidarity, Camden/ London
Catholic Workers from Giuseppe Conlon House London have been sustaining a solidarity vigil for Bradley Manning three times a week throughout his trial. We head to Camden Mon. Wed. Fri. 4-6pm. We have also included an Edward Snowden placard since the hunt for him has begun.
The vigil requires three people, ideally; on a few occasions we have got by with two. In the mornings we check how many Catholic Workers are available and text out to a small group of friends if we need to make up the numbers. Andrea and Serena now join us once a week at 5pm after their work commitments. Over the past few months Andre, Auburn, Dave, Eden, Rita, Sue, Roland, Seamus have helped us make up the numbers.

Snowden is a refugee, not a spy. But America has history when it comes to forcing down planes in defiance of international law

As Edward Snowden sits in an airside hotel, awaiting confirmation of Russia's offer of asylum, it is clear that he has already revealed enough to prove that European privacy protections are a delusion: under Prism and other programmes, the US National Security Agency and Britain's GCHQ can, without much legal hindrance, scoop up any electronic communication whenever one of 70,000 "keywords" or "search terms" are mentioned. These revelations are of obvious public interest: even President Obama has conceded that they invite a necessary debate. But the US treats Snowden as a spy and has charged him under the Espionage Act, which has no public interest defence.

That is despite the fact that Snowden has exposed secret rulings from a secret US court, where pliant judges have turned down only 10 surveillance warrant requests between 2001 and 2012 (while granting 20,909) and have issued clandestine rulings which erode first amendment protection of freedom of speech and fourth amendment protection of privacy. Revelations about interception of European communications (many leaked through servers in the US) and the bugging of EU offices in Washington have infuriated officials in Brussels. In Germany, with its memories of the Gestapo and the Stasi, the protests are loudest, and opposition parties, gearing up for an election in September, want him to tell more.

Manning, Snowden and Assange were the ones who took risks to expose crime

But those who planned the wars, those who committed war crimes, those who conduct illegal spying, for now, walk free

by Amy Goodman
theguardian.com, Thursday 1 August 2013

"What a dangerous edifice war is, how easily it may fall to pieces and bury us in its ruins," wrote Carl von Clausewitz, the 19th-century Prussian general and military theorist, in his seminal text "On War", close to 200 years ago. These lines came from the chapter "Information in War", a topic that resonates today, from Fort Meade, Maryland, where Bradley Manning has just been convicted of espionage in a military court, to the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has lived for more than a year, having been granted political asylum to avoid political persecution by the United States, to Russia, where National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden has been granted temporary aslyum.

Manning's conviction sparked momentary interest among members of the elite media in the US, who spent scant time at the two-month court-martial, located just miles north of Washington DC, Manning's supporters expressed relief that he was found not guilty of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, which would likely have carried a sentence of life in prison. He was convicted on 20 of 22 charges, and could face up to 136 years in prison. The sentencing hearing is underway.
ARTICLE CONTINUED...http://tinyurl.com/owjgc4t

Amy ,I listen to your Democracy Now! programs regularly and am very pleased that you have chosen to write for the indymedia ireland site . Your reporting of the Manning case has been superb .Keep up the good work.

screw you all you dirty pinko commies and your subversive website. Goodman, your show makes me puke. You need to come on to the no spin zone and get the real news. Stop supporting dirty traitors like manning and snowden. Support real americans like the koch brothers. long live america.

Thanks for dropping by indymedia , Bill .You certainly don't get any less scathing the older you get ! Well it looks like things are hotting up into a great debate here on indymedia ireland with all the well-known media pundits following this thread . John and Amy will doubtlessly disagree with you Bill on some of the points you raised but I'll let them answer those for themselves. I had a debate myself a year or so back back regarding wikileaks . The video is available here on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdGeBG8Iphg
As I understand it Vladimar Putin is preparing a comment for this thread right at this very moment . I'm very much looking forward to reading it when published.